James Franklin (born 1953 in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

) is an Australian philosopher, mathematician and

historian of ideas Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histor ...

Life and career

Franklin was educated at

St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill , motto_translation = Strive Strive for better things , established = , type = Independent single-sex secondary day and boarding school , educational_authority = New South Wales Department of Educat ...

, New South Wales. His undergraduate work was at the University of Sydney (1971–74), where he attended St John's College and he was influenced by philosophers David Stove and David Armstrong. He completed his PhD in 1981 at the University of Warwick, on

algebraic groups In mathematics, an algebraic group is an algebraic variety endowed with a group structure which is compatible with its structure as an algebraic variety. Thus the study of algebraic groups belongs both to algebraic geometry and group theory. M ...

. Since 1981 he has taught in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales. His research areas include the philosophy of mathematics and the '

formal science Formal science is a branch of science studying disciplines concerned with abstract structures described by formal systems, such as logic, mathematics, statistics, theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, information theory, ga ...

s', the

history of probability Probability has a dual aspect: on the one hand the likelihood of hypotheses given the evidence for them, and on the other hand the behavior of stochastic processes such as the throwing of dice or coins. The study of the former is historically olde ...

Australian Catholic The Catholic Church in Australia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual and administrative leadership of the Holy See. From origins as a suppressed, mainly Irish minority in early colonial times, the church has grown ...

history, the parallel between ethics and mathematics, restraint, the quantification of rights in applied ethics, and the analysis of extreme risk. Franklin is the literary executor of David Stove. He is a Fellow of the

Royal Society of New South Wales The Royal Society of New South Wales is a learned society based in Sydney, Australia. The Governor of New South Wales is the vice-regal patron of the Society. The Society was established as the Philosophical Society of Australasia on 27 June ...

History of ideas

His 2001 book, ''The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal'', covered the development of thinking about uncertain evidence over many centuries up to 1650. Its central theme was ancient and medieval work on the law of evidence, which developed concepts like

half-proof Half-proof ''(semiplena probatio)'' was a concept of medieval Roman law, describing a level of evidence between mere suspicion and the full proof (''plena probatio'') needed to convict someone of a crime. The concept was introduced by the Glossators ...

, similar to modern proof beyond reasonable doubt, as well as analyses of

aleatory contracts An aleatory contract is a contract where an uncertain event determines the parties' rights and obligations. For example, gambling, wagering, or betting typically use aleatory contracts. Additionally, another very common type of aleatory contract is ...

like insurance and gambling. The book was praised by N.N. Taleb. His polemical history of Australian philosophy, ''Corrupting the Youth'' (2003), praised the Australian realist tradition in philosophy and attacked postmodernist and relativist trends.

Philosophy of mathematics

In the philosophy of mathematics, Franklin defends an Aristotelian realist theory, according to which mathematics is about certain real features of the world, namely the quantitative and structural features (such as ratios and symmetry). The theory is developed in his 2014 book ''An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics: Mathematics as the Science of Quantity and Structure''. The theory stands in opposition to both Platonism and nominalism, and emphasises applied mathematics and mathematical modelling as the most philosophically central parts of mathematics. He is the founder of the Sydney School in the philosophy of mathematics. Over the years, the School has hosted emerging Australasian researchers and philosophers such as Anne Newstead, Lisa Dive, and Jeremiah Joven Joaquin. Paul Thagard writes that "the current philosophy of mathematics that fits best with what is known about minds and science is James Franklin's Aristotelian realism." In the philosophy of probability, he argues for an objective Bayesian view according to which the relation of evidence to conclusion is strictly a matter of logic. An example is evidence for and against conjectures in pure mathematics. His book ''What Science Knows: And How It Knows It'' develops the philosophy of science from an objective Bayesian viewpoint.

Ethics

His work on the parallel between ethics and mathematics received the 2005

Eureka Prize The Eureka Prizes are awarded annually by the Australian Museum, Sydney, to recognise individuals and organizations who have contributed to science and the understanding of science in Australia. They were founded in 1990 following a suggestion ...

for Research in Ethics. In 1998 he set up and taught for ten years a course on Professional Issues and Ethics in Mathematics at UNSW. He conducted the "Restraint Project", a study of the virtue of temperance or self-control in Australia. In 2008 he set up the Australian Database of Indigenous Violence. His book, ''The Worth of Persons: The Foundation of Ethics'', appeared in 2022.

Philosophy of religion

Franklin has defended Pascal's Wager and Leibniz's Best of all possible worlds theory, and has discussed

emergentism In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their int ...

as an alternative to materialist atheism and theism.

Australian Catholic history

He is the editor of the ''Journal of the

Australian Catholic Historical Society The Australian Catholic Historical Society discusses Australian Catholic history via a newsletter and meetings, and is focussed around Sydney. Leadership The society was founded in 1940 in Sydney, by a group of students of Australian Catholic hi ...

''. His books on Australian Catholic history ar
''Catholic Values and Australian Values''
(2006) an
''The Real Archbishop Mannix''
(2015, with G.O.Nolan and M. Gilchrist). He has written also on the Catholic sexual abuse crisis, Magdalen laundries, missions to Aboriginal Australians, and the virtuous life of Catholic rural communities.

Publications

Franklin has written several books and articles: * 1996 and 2011,
Proof in Mathematics: An Introduction
' , originally published as ''Introduction to Proofs in Mathematics'', in 1988. * 2001, repr. 2015,
The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal
', ; * 2003,

', ; * 2006,
Catholic Values and Australian Realities
', ; * 2007,
Life to the Full: Rights and Social Justice in Australia
', (edited) * 2009,
What Science Knows: And How It Knows It
' * 2014,
An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics
', * 2015,
The Real Archbishop Mannix: From the Sources
', * 2022,
The Worth of Persons: The Foundation of Ethics
', Articles (a selection): * 1982

''Quadrant'' 26 (11):51–60. * 1994,
The formal sciences discover the philosophers’stone
', in: ''Studies in History and Philosophy of Science'', Volume 25, No. 4, 513–533, Elsevier Science Ltd. * 2000, , in: ''The New Criterion'', Volume 18, No. 10, June 2000. * 2000,
Diagrammatic reasoning and modelling in the imagination: the secret weapons of the Scientific Revolution
', in: ''1543 and All That: Image and Word, Change and Continuity in the Proto-Scientific Revolution'', ed. G. Freeland & A. Corones, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 53–115. * 2003
"The representation of context: ideas from artificial intelligence"
in: ''Law, Probability and Risk 2'', 191–199. * 2006,
Chapter on 'Artifice and the natural world: Mathematics, logic, technology'
', in: ''Cambridge History of Eighteenth Century Philosophy'', ed. K. Haakonssen, Cambridge, 2006, 817–853. * 2010, The postmodern calculus, ''

New Criterion New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz (South Korean band), The Boyz Albums and EPs * New (album), ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartn ...

'' 29 (1) (Sept 2010), 75-80. * 2022
Mathematics, a Core Part of Classical Education
Australian Classical Education Society, (2 July 2022).

References

External links

James Franklin home pageGoogle scholar profilePhilpapers profileAustralian Database of Indigenous Violence
(archived 18 Aug 2020) {{DEFAULTSORT:Franklin, James 1953 births Alumni of the University of Warwick Australian historians Australian philosophers Australian Roman Catholics Historians of mathematics Living people People educated at St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill Philosophers of mathematics Structuralism (philosophy of mathematics) University of New South Wales faculty University of Sydney alumni